The sweetest things that ever grew
    Beside a human door.

The Greeks called flowers the Festival of the eye:  and so they are:  but they are something else, and something better.

    A flower is not a flower alone,
    A thousand sanctities invest it.

Flowers not only touch the heart; they also elevate the soul.  They bind us not entirely to earth; though they make earth delightful.  They attract our thoughts downward to the richly embroidered ground only to raise them up again to heaven.  If the stars are the scriptures of the sky, the flowers are the scriptures of the earth.  If the stars are a more glorious revelation of the Creator’s majesty and might, the flowers are at least as sweet a revelation of his gentler attributes.  It has been observed that

    An undevout astronomer is mad.

The same thing may be said of an irreverent floriculturist, and with equal truth—­perhaps indeed with greater.  For the astronomer, in some cases, may be hard and cold, from indulging in habits of thought too exclusively mathematical.  But the true lover of flowers has always something gentle and genial in his nature.  He never looks upon his floral-family without a sweetened smile upon his face and a softened feeling in his heart; unless his temperament be strangely changed and his mind disordered.  The poets, who, speaking generally, are constitutionally religious, are always delighted readers of the flower-illumined pages of the book of nature.  One of these disciples of Flora earnestly exclaims: 

    Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining
    Far from all voice of teachers and divines,
    My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining
        Priests, sermons, shrines

The popular little preachers of the field and garden, with their lovely faces, and angelic language—­sending the while such ambrosial incense up to heaven—­insinuate the sweetest truths into the human heart.  They lead us to the delightful conclusion that beauty is in the list of the utilities—­that the Divine Artist himself is a lover of loveliness—­that he has communicated a taste for it to his creatures and most lavishly provided for its gratification.

          Not a flower
    But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
    Of His unrivalled pencil.  He inspires
    Their balmy odours, and imparts then hues,
    And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes
    In grains as countless as the sea side sands
    The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth.

Cowper.